Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 23:50:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Brian Connors Subject: Six Irish Brothers - Chapter 3: The Boys of Belfast Six Irish Brothers - Chapter 3: The Boys of Belfast ----- Disclaimer and Acknowledgments The story you are about to read is true. These events happened and though some details have been skewed slightly to obscure the identities of the real persons involved, the events, relationships and substance of the tale have not been altered. Much of the material in this story is pornographic in nature, dealing with incest, teenage and preteen sex, gay themes, and so forth. If you are under 18, or it is illegal in your area to read this material, then stop now, and go Google something wholesome. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who has responded - I never imagined that so many of you would take the time to reply. It means a lot to me. I'd also like to warn you that there's no sex in this chapter. There have been numerous inquiries made about different aspects of my life, and I thought I'd answer a few, even though it requires jumping back in time a few years from the first two chapters. This is a part of my life that I have wanted to share for a long time. So as a "prequel" to my first experiences, I'm afraid it won't fill your quota of little boys getting it on with each other. :-) Still, there will be much more of the good stuff to come, if not so much in this chapter than the next certainly. ----- Chapter 3: The Boys of Belfast It was the fall of 1990, and we'd just moved back to Belfast, after my (half)brother Walt was born. I was seven, and I'd be starting in a new school. Full of nerves, no matter how much Mum and Greg and Sean tried to comfort me. I had all the usual anxieties: I was afraid no one would like me, that I'd be the class weirdo, that I wouldn't make any friends. Well, I met Ben Donovan the first day of school, and I wish I could say that we and I hit it off right away, but that was so far from the truth, you'd be amazed. He was about a month older than me, and a bit shorter, but more of a scrapper and much more street savvy. He had sandy brown hair and pale blue eyes, and an air about him that made me uneasy, at first. I don't know what it was, but that first term Ben and I got on each other's bad side instantly. We'd do everything in our power to annoy each other, to cross each other, to get each other in trouble. It was simply horrific...and yet, extremely fun. Funny thing was, when someone else would pick on one of us, we'd each stick up for the other, even to the point of bloody bouts in the schoolyard. Gave the teachers quite the workout, too. Over the break, and the next term, we found ourselves spending a lot of time together, and the hostility was replaced with rivalry, which eventually gave way to friendship. As we hung out and we began to open up to each other, I discovered things about his past that, to my seven-year-old mind, made sense of our unusual bond. He had been bouncing around "the system," in and out of foster care and boy's homes for almost as long as he could remember. His parents hadn't been married - well, his mother was, to another man. They lived in Derry. She'd had an affair with a "Yanker" as Ben called him. Somehow, the truth came out when he was 3, and his stepfather wanted nothing more to do with him. So his mother gave him up to his father - who kept him all of two weeks, before dropping him off at a church in Belfast and vanishing into the fog. I understood abandonment issues all too well, and that common thread helped forge an even deeper bond between Ben and myself, and in the space of a few months, we were the best of friends, and totally inseperable. Of course, we'd still kick the shite out of each other from time to time, but what's a few black eyes and bloody lips between best ates? It was after one of these dustups in the summer we turned 10 that Benji and I were cleaning ourselves up in the attic, and I came across an old box of photos and started looking through them. I wanted to show Ben pictures of me and Sean from Carrickfergus, but the photos went back further than that - including one of my father holding me after I was born. I pulled it out, and Ben just froze up, his mouth opening and closing like a salmon. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "Where'd you get that?" I told him we'd always had it. He kept shaking his head, and said "I swear that looks just like my Da." It couldn't be...could it? I rejected the notion and said, "Not half!" but still I asked, "What was your da's name?" "Charles Murdoch," says he...as my jaw hits the floor. We'd been going by mum's maiden name (O'Neill) for a while, and after the move to Belfast, had taken on Greg's, so he'd have no way of knowing that 'Murdoch' was our old bastard's name. "Do you have a photograph?" I asked. My mouth felt like sandpaper. Ben nodded and told me that there had been one with the things that were left with him at the church, and he'd kept it (subconsciously wishing that his dad would return for him). I tucked my photo in my pocket and we both made a dash for his house, only a few blocks away. I'm sure we ran in like a herd of elephants, but we didn't care. We ran to his room, and he pulled out a little box from under his bed, which held a pocket knife, some stamps that he'd collected, and a couple photos, one of his mother and her family, and the other of his father... He pulled it out, and we held it and mine together - and then looked up at each other in amazement when we saw that it was the same "Charles Murdoch." My jaw dropped open then, sinking to the ground I let out a low "Jesus, Mary and Joseph." I looked at the photos again, and the realization that my best friend was suddenly my brother - had been my brother all along - hit me all at once. Three years we'd known each other, and it had been right under our noses the whole time! I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry, but after a couple reflexive tears, I settled on the former. And Ben laughed, too. We both laughed so hard that our sides hurt, and I'm sure we scared his foster parents. When the laughter subsided, we each began a flurry of words, mostly along the lines of "how cool is that?" and ran back to my house. We showed Sean first, and after about ten minutes, the implications of the photographs sunk in, and he nearly lost it as badly as we had. Then we showed Mum and Greg. At first, they thought we were pulling their legs, but once they realized we were dead serious, their reaction was less like "Oh my god, that's awesome!" and more like "Holy shite, what do we do now?" Mum (who at this point was pregnant again, with Adam) said she knew that Da had affairs, but had no idea about a child. And she felt so sorry for Ben, and so did Greg, and all I could think about in my ten year old enthusiasm was that he could come live with us, and he'd have a family. Greg and Mum said they'd do their best to make that happen, but 'twas not to be. The courts weren't happy about how young Greg was, and said that since there was no "true parental relation," they wouldn't let Ben come with us because there were already five lads in the household and it would be too much of a burden. What shite that was! But appeal after appeal, there was nothing we could do. We kept in touch with Ben, as best we could, though with each new school or home it would take time for us to find each other again. And each time I saw him, he looked worse. Like each new place he stayed took its toll on him - little did I know then how true that was. But still, he'd grin from ear to ear when he saw me, and my heart would start racing. I didn't realize it until much later, but I'd had a kind of a crush on Benji, always had, and the whole surreal business of being brothers had, in a way, made it grow stronger. I felt like I needed to be with him, like he needed to be with me, with us, so he'd be okay, and so he wouldn't be hurt anymore. But that November, just after Adam was born, we got news that would crush us both: Greg had a new job, and so he and Mum were packing us all up and moving to America. Across the bloody ocean - so far, I thought I'd never see Benji again, and I couldn't bear it. I remember the day we said goobye. 20 December, 1993. We stood on the porch of his foster home, and made a solemn, tearful promise that we'd always be best mates, always be brothers. And Sean promised us both that he would find a way to make it possible for us to really be Ben's family. Even at 13, Sean took his promises very seriously, and that's one he never forgot. Losing Mum the next year was, of course, even harder. We found out she had breast cancer in March, and it was in June that she lost the fight. The funeral was on 23 June, 1994, and I turned 11 the day before. And people wonder why I never want to celebrate my birthday. I actually don't remember much from either day, and the it's the little things that I do remember. Standing in front of a mirror and Sean helping me with my tie. Watching Greg as he tried to hold it in. The roses by the graveside. The smiles that failed to touch anyone's eyes. And the rain. It poured when we laid Mum to rest. And I was glad for it. Not only did it fit my mood, it just seemed right. I grew up on old movies, and it always rained at funerals. So, in my mind, it simply had to rain. And it did, like a storm on the Mayo coast. Sean tried to keep me under the umbrella, but I kept wriggling away from him. I wanted to stand in the rain. I wanted to feel God's tears. I wanted it to wash away the whole in my heart. I wanted to get a chill, so at least I could feel something besides the dull, numb ache. I stood in the downpour so long that my suit shrunk several inches. I didn't mind, I never wanted to wear the damn thing again. I did succeed in getting a chill, actually. After the funeral, we went home and lit the fire, and Sean sat me down in front of it, wrapped me in blankets, and just held me tight. Greg put the younger ones to bed, and sat down with us. The three of us just sat and stared into the fire. I shivered a lot, I fear, and Sean just rocked me back and forth while Greg rubbed my back. I fell asleep after a while, and Greg left for the wake. Sean stayed with me, cuddled with me on the sofa. A lot of the memories of those days are gone, but I do remember the dream I had then. Upset and a little feverish, it was one of those nightmares that haunts you forever. It was nighttime, and I was in a van, going for a ride somewhere in Belfast. Mum was sitting next to me. As the street lamps passed by, her face kept changing, from a smile to a horrible angry grimace. Then the lights went away, and the van stopped. They opened the door, and she threw me out onto the cobblestones, in front of a church. Statues of archangels towered overhead, and I was more scared than I had ever been. There was laughter, and I realized that Ben was there, pointing at me and laughing. Then she called him into the van and they drove off, leaving me there in the muck. As if that wasn't weird enough, Greg appeared, climbing down from the steeple, and he was blind. When I saw his empty eye sockets I screamed... ...and woke up in a cold sweat, with Sean murmering in my ear, trying to soothe me with a cold compress on my forehead. I started crying and said something like "Sean, please don't go. Don't ever go. Everybody leaves. Mum and Da left. And we left Benji behind. Don't go. Please, Seannie." And he grabbed me and hugged me, and said "I'll never leave you, Timmy-o. I'm always gonna be here. Right with you, no matter what." I sniffled and looked at him, eyes watery. "Puh-puh-promise?" "Uh-huh. I promise, Eeyore, I promise." And then I remembered my promise to Ben, and I started crying again. "We left him, Sean. I told Benji we'd always be his family, and we left him behind." I was sobbing. I cried more over that than I had over mum. Maybe I was avoiding the real issue and transferring my grief to something else, but it doesn't really matter. Sean looked at me, and said. "We'll bring him home, Tim. I promise. And you know I always keep my promises. We'll bring Ben home." Some of the details are fuzzy, but that's what stands out in my mind to this day. Sean's words. "I always keep my promises. We'll bring Ben home." And from that day on, he set himself to make good on that promise. ------ There you have the Reader's Digest version of three of the most important, traumatic years of my life. Those events molded who I am more than any other, I think, and are definitely key factors in the sexual relationship that blossomed between Sean and I, and eventually the others as well. It was horniness, and boys-will-be-boys and all that, but it was more for comfort than anything else. Fear not, there's much more sex to come in the near future. :-) In the meantime, if you'd like to email me, my address is: patriotspecte@yahoo.com